On Monday, July 30, the United States Supreme Courtruled on a case that will have profound implications for healthcare, women’s rights and labor relations for some time to come. You probably heard about it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a closer look.

Several years ago, the administration and Congress passed a law attempting to reform our broken healthcare system. It’s by no means perfect, but the Affordable Care Act does increase access to healthcare for many who were previously shut out of the system. A portion of Americans screamed (and continue to scream) “socialism,” mostly due to the fact that the law represents the government helping the less fortunate. But that wasn’t only controversy. The ACAalso includes mandates to expand preventative care for women. This does not require any out-of-pocket expenses for the patient, so long as she goes to an in-network provider. Included among these services are things like annual “well-woman” visits and age-appropriate reproductive care. The law recognizes that the needs of a woman entering her childbearing years can be different than the needs of a woman leaving that period in her life, and, while the list of services covered is fairly specific, it leaves many decisions in the hands of individual patients and their doctors. So far, so provocative—at least if you’re on the right.

For conservatives, it only gets worse from there. In addition to free mammograms and HPV testing, the ACA also includes a “birth control mandate,” which requires that all 20 FDA-approved methods of preventing pregnancy (only as prescribed by a doctor) be covered by insurance plans. Criticisms were swift and rampant, with FOX News commentators, tea partiers, Christian fundamentalists and republican lawmakers raging at the fact that the government seemed to be not only condoning, but actually encouraging—and subsidizing—female promiscuity.

Those trying to articulate the true purpose of the mandate—that women seeking to prevent pregnancy should no longer have to spend hundreds of dollars every year—were drowned out by hordes of right-wingers yelling about how women should have to pay for their own slutty decisions. Never mind that before the ACA, the extremely common birth control pills prescribed to me by my own doctor cost $125 per month out of pocket, as they were not covered by my insurance.

Soon, lawsuits began working their way through the courts as the war of words escalated. There were many aspects to debate—everything from how various means of contraception work to American corporate structures to the rights and responsibilities (moral and legal) of corporate shareholders. In March, cases involving three corporations owned by two individual families reached the Supreme Court. Both sides made their arguments, and then we waited.

In case you are too bewildered or angry to follow the news, what follows is my own analysis of the evidence and the outcome.

Primarily at issue are four forms of birth control approved by the FDA that prevent implantation of an already fertilized egg. While this includes two forms of emergency contraception (“Plan B,” in the common parlance), it also includes two kinds of IUD, which most people would generally consider to be a routine form of birth control. Some religious groups define methods of contraception that prevent implantation as “abortifacients” and oppose them based on their belief that abortion is immoral. The corporations challenging the birth control mandate ascribe to those religious beliefs.

Pregnancy is defined by federal law as beginning with implantation, NOT conception. That definition was established by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1970, and that is the definition that informs every law written about pregnancy, birth control, abortion, etc. If there is no pregnancy, there can be no abortion to oppose, period. The corporations challenging the birth control mandate believe that their definition of when pregnancy begins supersedes the legal definition of when a pregnancy begins.

We are seeing a growing number of high profile cases on a range of issues that assert the notion of corporate personhood, which has a long and storied history in the United States. Sometimes, corporate personhood is characterized as a legal “simplification” that allows corporations to sue and be sued and enter into contracts as would a natural person. Lately, however, corporate personhood has taken on a whole new meaning which assumes that a legally constructed entity is entitled to ALL the same rights as natural persons—including, in the context of this week’s Supreme Court ruling, the right to freely express religious beliefs. (In an earlier Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, corporations were found to have First Amendment rights to free speech; this now applies to campaign contributions in the same way for natural persons AND corporations.)

Under the Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores ruling, women employed by corporations objecting on religious grounds to a contraception mandate that includes ALL 20 the FDA-approved methods (including the four believed to induce abortion) must find alternate means of obtaining coverage. Let me be perfectly clear: the Court ruled that “closely held” corporations (those in which no more than five individuals control at least 51 percent shares) that have a religious beef with a particular contraceptive are not required to comply with a mandate that applies to all other for-profit, secular corporations. If that doesn’t seem so bad, keep in mind that “closely held corporations” actually account for about 90 percent of the companies in the US —running the gamut from local, family-owned businesses to Koch Industries. This is hardly a limited ruling, as these companies maintain about half of American private workforce.

I generally try to respect the opinions of those who hold beliefs that may differ from my own. However, in this instance, the highest court of the land decided to ignore the law of the land, handing down a decision that treats religious beliefs based neither in law or science as though they were legally sound. If that wasn’t bad enough, the ruling continues down the highway to hell that is corporate personhood. All of this was deftly rebutted by Justice Ginsburg in her epic dissent.

Ginsburg says, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination:

Until this litigation, no decision of this Court recognized a for-profit corporation’s qualification for a religious exemption from a generally applicable law… The absence of such precedent is just what one would expect, for the exercise of religion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificially legal entities. As Chief Justice Marshall observed nearly two centuries ago, a corporation is “an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.” Corporations, Justice Stevens more recently reminded, “have no conscience, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. … Until today, religious exemptions had never been extended to any entity operation in ‘the commercial, profit-making world.'” The reason why is hardly obscure. Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community. Indeed, by law, no religion-based criterion can restrict the work force of for-profit corporations. The distinction between a community made up of believers in the same religion and one embracing persons of diverse beliefs, clear as it is, constantly escapes the Court’s attention. One can only wonder why the Court shuts this key difference from sight.

But it’s okay, Justice Alito and his four (male) compatriots tell us. The government can just pay for your slut pills now! We’ll treat for-profit secular entities the same way we treat legitimate religious not-for-profit institutions, and allow the millions of women employed by closely held corporations to avail themselves of that loophole. Because conservatives love big government, right?

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About the author

Faith Swords
Faith Swords lives and works in Washington, DC and is desperately trying not to go native.

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